Real jobs and real chocolate milk

Two things. First, the F-word got a real job, which is awesome. He'd been making ends meet and pulling his weight financially in the household, but had had to, you know, hustle a bit. Not like rentboy hustle, like bustle-hustle. A few days here, a few hours there, a few days of hoop-jumping to get government money; that sort of thing. All quite precarious, stressful, and boring. Some of it was very lucrative, like the supply teaching, which is almost 3 Cs a day here, but that was the most stressful of all, since it was generally with country teenagers.

The least lucrative and the least stressful was working at a falafel stand at a series of local markets, of which there are a plethora in the neighboring towns. He quite enjoyed that, but the guy who runs the stall is the one whose Canadian wife left him with their son for Canada, hence he's shattered, and she'd been the one mostly running the stall, hence it's not really running like a well-oiled machine . . . hence the F-word was making minimum wage (which, admittedly, is really high in Australia; around $15, and that's on par with the US and Canadian dollar at the mo).

Considering our taste for holidays, expensive cheeses, and paying off our mortgage super fast so we can move back to Europe in style, his unpredictable schedual and lack of extra money has been frustrating for both of us. I guess there was also a lurking fear of me suddenly losing my job, too, and what we'd manage to pull out of our asses then. It's not a very realistic fear unless I go mental at the next conference I attend and start writing poetry on the walls with my own poo. But what if I really want to and feel I simply can't? No, I refuse to feel so stifled.

So that's all great, but what's even better is that it's a real job, by which I mean a good one - adult education, socially useful, with a non-profit instead of one of the cunt cowboy schools he and I have both had more than enough of, non-ridiculous commute AND, best of all, only two days a week, which means he has his mental space for art without having to waste his time hustling for short jobs, and for afternoon sex. He was getting to the point of wanting a job so bad I think he would have accepted one that wasn't real, in the sense of good. So I'm relieved. It is fucking difficult to live with artists when they're not artisting.

Also while in past conversations he's been fond of the idea of being a house-husband, when the possibility arose before him he couldn't do it. I understand. I couldn't be a housewife either. Not because of not feeling it'd be unfulfilling or whatever, but I just couldn't emotionally accept going down to only one income for two people in such a precarious world, which is his feeling, more or less. Maybe we'd feel differently about it if we both couldn't get real, in the sense of good, jobs, and our situations were either nothing or 50 hour weeks (I've done the 50 hour weeks; I'd rather do nothing). And maybe we'll feel differently when there are kids in the picture. Maybe we'll both want to stay home then even if we were still only working 16-20 hour weeks. Hard to say.

Anyways, the second thing. I've figured out the not-at-all-rocket-science of homemade chocolate milk. It's just like an iced latte; you mix together some sugar and cocoa in a few drops of hot water and then put in cold milk and ice. I can't believe I've been such a fucking shithead as to buy pre-packaged chocolate milk at the store like a fucking doofus for 32 years. Well, let's say 28 years, since 4 is the first time I remember agitating to be bought chocolate milk. That's 28 years of being a total shithead. Okay, let's say 24, because maybe my parents wouldn't have let me boil water unattended until I was 8 or something. 24 years of being a total shithead. Sometimes I fucking blush for myself. In the last year alone I must have blew about $100 from not having figured that shit out. And it's so much better, especially using that sort of cocoa with the superfine chili powder, so that it's a spicy chocolate milk. Try buying that shit in the store. You can't.